Google Takes Data Centers to the Stars to Solve Earthbound Problems

Google has famously branded its high-risk, high-cost megaprojects moonshots. That label applies almost literally to its latest one. The tech titan yesterday announced plans to launch a satellite into space that will attempt to process AI queries above the Kármán Line. Eventually, the goal is to launch dozens of satellites that together will act like an AI data center.

The lofty ambitions are grounded in harsh realities down on the ground, as tech companies fight for data-center real estate and vast amounts of water and electricity — and as a growing number of constituencies fight them off. 

The Brave Little Refrigerator

Google’s satellite, roughly the size of a refrigerator, contains four AI chips called tensor processing units that together have about as much compute power as a single server at a data center. Phase two of Project Suncatcher will involve launching a duo of AI satellites next year to test how well they communicate with each other using lasers. Eventually, Google has drawn up plans to launch even more complex systems but for now, Project Suncatcher is more of a proof of concept that could, possibly next decade, yield results. 

Tech leaders including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman have supported space “data centers” as a potential solution to terrestrial troubles. Google’s first attempt at making the idea a reality shows the new problems that arise in the process:

• There’s a lot of space in space and no neighbors, but that’s not necessarily true forever. As satellites go defunct and are sent into the atmosphere for a fiery retirement, they could erode the ozone layer. And the leftover space junk that doesn’t burn up could create collision hazards.
• Google’s trying to solve the Earth’s power problem, meanwhile, by picking an orbital path that lets the satellites bathe their unfurled panels in the sun perpetually. The satellite also won’t use water to cool its chips, instead letting heat dissipate through putty-like material. It’s not a perfect system: The satellites have to take a break every 15 minutes to cool down.

Space Beef: Google has made it clear there’s a long runway ahead before it can reliably answer users’ “Do these eyeglasses look good on me?” queries from space. But the small start puts Google ahead of rivals, who’ve recently been arguing about the timeline for space data centers. Elon Musk said last month that SpaceX will launch AI data centers into orbit next year and reach significant scale the year after. His archenemy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is openly skeptical.